The present invention relates to a device for cooling a rotating grinding wheel with a mainly horizontal axis and a grinding envelope surface and a work piece contacting the grinding wheel in a grinding machine.
For obtaining a high production rate in a grinding machine it is desirable that the speed of the grinding wheel in relation to the work piece be as high as possible. A high grinding wheel speed, however, causes a high temperature to develop in the contact between the grinding wheel and the work piece. An excessively high temperature results in a fast wear of the grinding wheel and deterioration of the ground surface of the work piece. In order to avoid too high a temperature rise the grinding wheel and the work piece therefore have to be cooled with a suitable cooling agent during the grinding operation. To this end it is earlier known, in order to ensure that the cooling agent penetrates to the contact between grinding wheel and work piece, to arrange collecting plates for the cooling agent around the grinding spot and to supply the cooling agent, e.g. water, in such great amount that a mainly homogeneous mass of cooling agent is situated in a space which is limited by the plates and the mutually contacting surfaces of the grinding wheel and the work piece. Such a device is shown in e.g. the Swedish patent publication No. 7314281-2, publication number 390.912.
The plates comprised in the known device are comparatively bulky and sometimes constitute an obstacle for the accessibility of the grinding spot. Plates with a given shape can in general not be used together with work pieces of different dimensions, so that when the dimension of the work piece is changed, the plates must also be replaced, as a rule.
The object of the present invention is to provide a cooling device by which a good cooling of the work piece and the grinding wheel is secured, which device is simple and inexpensive to produce, which can easily be adapted to work pieces of different sizes, which allows a good access to the grinding spot, and which does not affect the environment negatively.
This is achieved, according to the invention, by that the device shows the characterizing features stated in the appended Claim 1.